Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was among the great artists of the Baroque period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Considered one of the founders of modern painting, he is famous for creating a radically new kind of realistic art. He painted directly from life, without preparatory drawings, to establish a high realism in his work and a powerful and stark psychological expressiveness in his protagonists. His paintings defied conventions to such a degree that their meanings have divided critics and viewers for centuries, while inspiring generations of subsequent artists from Velazquez to Rembrandt.In this highly original study, Troy Thomas examines Caravaggio's life and art in relation to his most profound achievement: the creation of modernity. He explicitly focuses on the inherent tensions, contradictions and ambiguities in Caravaggio's art - key areas often ignored by other experts. Structured thematically and chronologically, the book begins with an in-depth look at
